Lawrence O’Donnell Dings Trump for Lacking Hannity’s ‘Moral Clarity’ on Putin

In his opening monologue Thursday night, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell issued rare praise for Sean Hannity—for having the “moral clarity” on Vladimir Putin that Hannity’s good friend Donald Trump has lacked.

O’Donnell referenced a March interview the Fox News host conducted with Trump, in which the ex-president declined to call Putin “evil” or even acknowledge that he has committed “evil” acts. O’Donnell also cited a more recent discussion Hannity had with actor and humanitarian Sean Penn in which the two agreed that “evil” was an accurate descriptor of the Russian president.

“Donald Trump still cannot bring himself to say anything like that,” O’Donnell said. “Donald Trump does not have the moral clarity of Sean Penn, or Sean Hannity, when it comes to Vladimir Putin.”

Trump again called into Hannity’s primetime Fox News show on Wednesday, and O’Donnell honed in on what Trump—again—did not say.

“Sean Hannity is not giving up on the dream of another Trump presidency, and he apparently has not given up on the dream of getting Donald Trump to look at Vladimir Putin through a moral frame,” O’Donnell said.

Although Trump did refer to Russia’s actions as “genocide,” as has President Joe Biden and his Ukrainian counterpart, the former president again passed on the chance to describe the Putin-initiated war in Ukraine as “evil in our time,” as Hannity put it.

“Hannity could not have given Trump a stronger signal that he needed to answer this question the right way than by pointing out to him that he had already asked him this exact question the last time he was on Sean Hannity’s show,” O’Donnell said after playing a clip from Wednesday night’s interview.

And yet, O’Donnell continued, “Donald Trump said nothing. He said a couple hundred words that included NATO, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, NATO becoming rich, he said something really insulting about Chuck Todd—but he did not dare to say one insulting word about Vladimir Putin. Not one.”

When Russia first attacked Ukraine, Trump lauded the invasion as “genius” and “very savvy.”

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